Mekong Journals: 22
ChrestomatherYesterday I took three turns as Principal Observer. What it consists of is this: for the first half hour, the Observer is equipped with binoculars; either standing…
Mekong Journals: 21
Earlier in the day we stopped at another small place – just a single hut surrounded by breadfruit and cassava plants – and found a forty-ish man…
Mekong Journals: 20
I’m writing this as we slowly make our way through a series of rapids. The current seems very fast, and in place the water is turbulent, but…
Mekong Journals: 19
January 9, 2003 We’re setting out in two boats this morning. This is the beginning of the expedition properly speaking. Now we head straight up to the…
Mekong Journals: 18
Yesterday, in the boat, Isabel commented that among zoologists there are many who don’t take cetologists seriously: ‘how can you work on dolphins?’ She attributes this in large…
Mekong Journals: 17
Isabel hopes to do these surveys continuously over a year. After that she will have a complete and fairly exhaustive record of where the dolphins live and where…
Mekong Journals: 16
The whole point of the survey is to create very highly standardized measurements and recordings. In ‘On Effort’ periods, in Isabel’s survey, there are 2 observers on…
Mekong Journals: 15
Isabel’s survey is intended to establish, in a reliable way, the extent and limits of the dolphin habitat on the river. There are, Isabel said, no established techniques…
Mekong Journals: 14
All this while Isabel had been agonizing about what to do with the dog. In New Zealand he would have been put down of course, and she…
Mekong Journals: 13
When we turned into the hospital I had an extraordinarily vivid recollection of visits to upcountry Cambodian hospitals in Jan 1993. They were nothing more than jumbles of…